It turns out that palm trees are an important part of our (NZ’s) diary industry. Palm kernels are used as feed for the cows, in fact it is actually quite nutritious.
New Zealand is the largest user of PKE, importing about a quarter of the world’s supply. Statistics NZ figures show imports peaked in the year to June 2015 at 1.94 million tonnes before falling to 1.86m/t in the year to June 2016. ref
This surprised me, as you obviously do not see palm kernels listed on any milk-based products. I assumed that the ingredients listed were the same as the ingredients used to produce the product in front of me. But that is wrong, obviously… You don’t see grass listed… lol.
Another example of this fallacious reasoning is: the rennin used to clot milk is produced by GMOs. While the food produced, cheese, is not genetically modified, the organisims used to produce it are. But that doesnt require the food to be labelled as GMO (even worse, in NZ, you can actually get away with listing palm oil as simply a vegetable oil… ref).
The point I wanted to make is; that NZ is profiting from the destruction of rain-forests, and we should stop. But I am unsure about how bad palm kernels are for the environment, and I am unsure about the practices of our suppliers. In fact I am actually rather skeptical that palm is ‘bad’ as dubbed by catchy titles in the media. Possibly farming practices are bad, but that shouldn’t condemn the product.
Further investigation required.
Edit: Ok, scrap that. Here is the blog I wanted to write, but didn’t have the motivation/knowledge. It’s really good.